YouTube cuts royalty claiming option for short snippets of music in UGC videos

YouTube last week announced a policy change regarding the manual
claims tool that it provides copyright owners. It will affect music
companies seeking to claim royalties where their songs or recordings are
used in user-generated content. The web giant says that the new policy
will “improve fairness in the creator ecosystem, while still respecting
copyright owners’ rights to prevent unlicensed use of their [music]”.

The new policy only relates to YouTube’s manual claims tool for
copyright owners – not the automated Content ID system that most music
rights owners now use most of the time to identify and manage third
party videos that use their music. It also only relates to where music
used in a user-uploaded video is, in YouTube’s words, “very short or
unintentional”.

The update follows recent technical changes that also seek to
deal with a frustration among the YouTube creator community. That being
that a music rights owner can currently claim all the ad income
generated by a video that contains their music, even if said video only
contains a snippet of that music which is, well, “very short or
unintentional”.

Expanding on that, in a blog post last week YouTube said that these policy and technical changes are in response to “a concerning trend we’ve seen – [which is the] aggressive manual claiming of very short music clips used in monetised videos. These claims can feel particularly unfair, as they transfer all revenue from the creator to the claimant, regardless of the amount of music claimed”.

Explaining the recent technical changes, YouTube said that
copyright owners using its manual claims tool now need to provide
timestamps identifying where in a video their music appears. “We also
made updates to our editing tools in Creator Studio”, the YouTube blog
aimed at its creators added, “that allow you to use those timestamps to
remove manually claimed content from your videos, automatically
releasing the claim and restoring monetisation”.

The new policy change means that, with these “very short or
unintentional” uses of music, the music copyright owner will not now be
able to claim any ad income from the video through the manual claims
system. They will, however, still be able to block the video, or veto
the video makers from monetising their content.

Although the policy change may actually result in more music
companies who use the manual claims tool blocking videos, it’s hoped
that ultimately it will mean fewer YouTube creators losing all their ad
income simply because of a tiny snippet of music appearing in any one
upload.

Though, YouTube then adds in its blog post, if creators want to
ensure there are no music licensing issues whatsoever – they should
ensure that they don’t use any uncleared third party songs or recordings
in their videos. Which basically means licensing tunes from
one-stop-licence library music companies like Epidemic Sound.

YouTube also suggests creators make sure that there is no music
playing in the background when a video is shot. Even though, in many
countries, that would be covered by a copyright exception anyway,
meaning no licence should be required. But, of course, rights management
tools on user-generated content platforms are still struggling with the
ins and outs of copyright exceptions and, in the US, the always
ambiguous concept of fair use.

YouTube goes on: “Our enforcement of these new policies will
apply to all new manual claims beginning in mid-September, providing
adequate time for copyright owners to adapt. Once we start enforcement,
copyright owners who repeatedly fail to adhere to these policies will
have their access to manual claiming suspended”.

“We strive to make YouTube a fair ecosystem for everyone”, it
concludes, “including songwriters, artists, and YouTube creators. Our
goal is to unlock new value for everyone by powering creative reuse and
content mashups, while fairly compensating all rightsholders”.

It remains to be seen how big an impact these developments have
on music companies, especially those who proactively chase every penny
they can whenever their songs or recordings appear in user-generated
content.

Of course, while YouTube has been evolving these systems and
the accompanying technology for years now, the challenge of managing
music rights in the user-generated content domain is becoming an ever
bigger talking point. Because deals are being done with an increasing
number of UGC platforms and this particular kind of digital income is
set to become a key growth revenue stream for the music industry in the
years ahead.